A Scientist Looks at the Hippies.

“Some psycho-social and scientific commentary are proposed for dealing with the social and medical problems of the hippie phenomenon.”

Transcript abstract

This is a historical report, in the sense that it was prepared in 1967, the year the first Ethnopharmacology Symposium was held in San Francisco and where I was first alerted to the Hippie movement. Later that year I went back to the West Coast on the request of my Director at NIMH to check on the validity of sensational TV and newspaper articles with special attention to drug use and abuse. A report was prepared and submitted to him in January 1967, but I was not allowed to publish it.

In this paper, the hippie lifestyle is described in details, as I saw it. Also the most popular drugs that seemed to play a significant role in their life are discussed. Some psycho-social and scientific commentary are proposed for dealing with the social and medical problems of the hippie phenomenon.

This report is presented essentially unchanged, except for some editing of expressions that are not appropriate today. This is the first time, after 50 years, that this report is published in full. Only a few excerpts had been quoted in a 1998 book in Cheryl Pellerin’s “Trips” with permission. This book has also been translated into German and French.